Monday, September 24, 2012

My last full day in the Bugaboos was my best plein air painting
day ever! After an hour of sketching and a picnic lunch in a flower-filled
meadow beside a snowbank-encrusted pond, we descended to a ridge above
spectacular Cobalt
Lake.

Sara Genn got us off to an inspiring start with a demo on capturing
the spirit of a place in 20-minutes... First she covered the canvas completely
with a richly-hued under-painting of Sara-colours; then she carved out the craggy
cliffs and cols with a super-energized blizzard of titanium white. (As you can
see in the second picture below, when she tossed it to one side and began
another, her first demo was inspected by an oddly colour-matched caterpillar)

Then we each painted as fast as we could for 20 (well,
actually 30) minutes, and produced this array of captured spirits – shown laid
out for a totally uncritical crit.

Only then did we begin, and in most cases almost finish, our
serious paintings. What a day!

Thursday, September 20, 2012

In my eagerness to tell
you about the helicopter drop-offs, I left out some numbers I hope you’ll find
as impressive as we all did at the time… There are five spires in the Bugaboos
that top out at more that 3000 meters.The
first day we were dropped off at glacier level, about 2600 meters, with winds
gusting to … well not much actually, but at just a few degrees above freezing, any
breeze is an icy blast, and those of us who weren’t wearing our storm gear just
about froze. One of my fellow-painters, shivering violently commented:

Tim from Denver:
I think I’ve just discovered how Pointillism
was invented!

So, the next day we were dropped off in Tamarack Glen, a lovely
plateau at an elevation of only 2300 meters.But it rained, just a little…

Liz Wiltzen, our other instructor (and guide) has painted and hiked in these mountains under even more bracing conditions. Once she got us to our position beside one of the tarns, she pulled her toque
over her ears, poured everyone a nice cup of tea (I am not making this up!) and
did a brilliant demo of 10-shape, 50-brushstroke painting. I think the 50
brushstroke limitation is a useful concept only for oil and acrylic painters,
who can scrumble one fully-loaded stroke all over the place, but I decided to
apply the 10-shape paradigm to my watercolour painting, after seeing how well
Liz’s boldly-stated demo turned out… Unfortunately, the numbing cold dulled my
boldness somewhat and I proceeded to block out the 110-shape jumble on the left, instead.

Many people already know that Robert Genn is amazing... but here's a picture for those who require proof. He is starting his third demo of the day on the
underside of a board that he has slanted to keep the rain off the paint!

This is one of the paintings I started the first day.Note the word ‘started’… Robert suggests that
when you’re dropped off (note the term ‘dropped off’ as I’ll be going on about
that at some length) in a spectacular spot such as this, you capture the ambiance, the lights and darks, and general awesomeness of the place as quickly
and spontaneously as you can, then put your painting aside before you start
puttering. He himself started as many as six paintings every day.

In the format of my on-going Drama of Painting Plein Air, his
actual words, when he saw the painting as it looks below, were:

Robert Genn: You must abandon this immediately.

It has taken me almost two weeks to see this with ‘fresh
eyes’ and add the shadows and extra clouds that appeared later in the afternoon.

Now, about being dropped off by a helicopter… On the bus
from Banff to the heliport in the Columbia Valley, the procedure was explained to us.
At first, I thought they were kidding, but no, this is really how it is done… When you set
down on some windswept, not-particularly-level ridge, the helicopter doesn’t
actually stop, and they don’t want anyone near the ends of the rotor. So, as
soon as you’re out the door, you crouch down no more than two meters from the runners,
covering your head and holding all your stuff down until the helicopter is gone,
and the prop-wash and the racket give way to silence. Then you straighten up as
smoothly as possible, brush yourself off, and try not to think about assuming
that crouched position again (with your eyes closed) while the
helicopter lands beside you when it comes to pick you up.

About Me

Charlene Brown is a Canadian painter who started writing about painting trips during the ten years she and her husband lived in Dubai. The Gulf Weekly began publishing her accounts of painting trips in that part of the Arabian peninsula -- then said they might consider other countries, even such exotic locations as Canada! She had written about painting trips in over twenty countries by the time her husband retired and they returned to Canada to live.